Weston Talks About His Race

Thanks to Weston for this report. As an editorial aside, I am very grateful to everyone who has contributed recently to the blog. I feel like we have been able to publish a substantial amount of quality content, due mostly to a collaborative effort with or readers and contributors.

All week long we watched the weather report for this race. We were supposed to get hammered by heavy rain and wind, but it ended up being a pretty nice day and we avoided any rain. The race was a loop that we did 3 times and added up to 57 miles with a decent amount of climbing. So we rolled out at a pretty easy pace (about 18-19mph) and the group stayed together for the first 6-7 miles, but then a guy slipped off the front and a couple others bridged up to him. The peloton laughing let them dangle and we maintained a gap behind them of less than a minute for about 20 more miles.
At this point we were in the middle of the second lap and realized we needed to organize and reel that front group back in. We started rotating guys through the pace line taking short pulls. But we had some guys in our group who couldn't seem to keep that going and we kept losing any ground we'd make up on the lead group. Specifically the B.Y.R.D.S. development team had a really hard time with this.
Leading into the first hill climb on the last lap we were over a minute behind the lead group with 17 miles to go. The group blew up on the climb and I found myself in a chase group with 3 other guys and we started working together and started gaining ground on the front group. A couple of guys dropped off the front group and we passed them and kept creeping towards the front of the race. I was feeling strong and another racer named Jared had good legs but our other two guys were pretty cooked and we needed them if we were going to catch the leader. Knowing it wasn't going to happen we sat up a little bit before the sprint finish. Right before the finish is a hard left and then it's 200m to the line. We came around the corner hot and soon after jumped out of the saddle. I came around 4th and passed 2 guys but couldn't get Jared before the line. All in all it was a super fun race and my legs were spent at the end. I landed 3rd spot on the podium.